Monteverde snatches Le Mans Legend again

Well known historic racing hot shoe Carlos Monteverde won the Le Man Legend race on 11 June in his Ferrari 250LM after beating off a pair of Listers, one of which had been on pole.

Monteverde’s LM won the 2009 race, which was again limited to cars from 1949 – 65 era for this year.

This year’s victory came just 2.4 seconds ahead of Alex Buncombe’s Lister Knobbly, which was joined on the grid by Jon Minshaw's example (below) which came home third. Joe Twyman and Roger Wils' Bizzarrini 5300GT was fourth while Ludovic Caron finished in fifth place in his AC Cobra.

Putting up a fight was Oliver Bryant in his AC Cobra, which briefly had the lead from Monteverde but stopped on the Mulsanne Straight just two laps before the end of the race. Its failure to finish denied Bryant the Le Mans Legend laurels he has pursued for years.

Also retiring was Gregor Fisken’s Aston Martin DBR1 while the event marked the even bigger news of Sir Stirling Moss’ retirement from competition when Moss’ (below) handed the keys of his Porsche RS 61 to Ian Nuthall after qualifying. Nuthall went on to bring the German racer home in 23rd place, in a time of 50min and 57.785 seconds.

The race, a pre-cursor to the main 24 hour event, featured other racing celebrities including multiple Le Mans winner, Emanuele Pirro who co-drove a Lotus 15 with Roger Wills to 46th place (out of 63 starters) and BTCC ace Patrick Watts, who was won his class in a 1951 Allard J2 – one of the oldest cars to take part.